Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim(1729–1781)
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the German dramatist and critic, was born at Kamenz in Saxony. The son of a scholarly Lutheran pastor, he was sent to study theology at Leipzig University. There, however, he absorbed the popular rationalism of the Enlightenment, whose leading contemporary exponent was the Leibnizian Christian Wolff, of Halle. Lessing was influenced in the same direction by his friends from Berlin, Christoph Friedrich Nicolai and Moses Mendelssohn, and by the writings of the English deists, many of which had been translated into German. Although literature, and especially the drama, became Lessing's supreme interest, he was to return to theology in the last decade of his life. He has no special claim to being ranked as a philosopher of originality and distinction, but with regard to the diffusion of certain ideas and attitudes among educated minds, his historical influence is preeminent. He was above all a critic, and his attitude may be described as one of "passionate detachment." His nonconformity made him appear to be perennially restless; he was never permanently satisfied to adopt the conventional opinions of society, always preferring to be in a "minority of one." The movement of his mind carried him beyond his parents' theological beliefs and the commonplace deism of his twenties until, through his invocation of Benedict de Spinoza, he eventually prepared the way for the romantic reaction against the Enlightenment.
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